Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday May 10, 2012 @11:32PM
from the best-skip dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that Dish Network has announced a new feature called called Auto Hop for its satellite TV subscribers that will let you automatically skip all commercials for prime time television from the four major broadcast networks — when you watch programs the day after they are first aired. 'Viewers love to skip commercials,' says Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management. 'With the Auto Hop capability of the Hopper, watching your favorite shows commercial-free is easier than ever before.' Craig Moffett says it's going to be hard for Dish to maintain good relationships with its programming affiliates when they start offering a feature intended to cut out the bulk of the affiliates' revenues. Whether the auto-skip feature can withstand legal challenge remains to be seen. 'Given the already long list of industry-unfriendly features promoted by Dish, one wonders if Auto Hop will be the final straw that provokes legal action from the broadcast networks,' says Moffett. 'We suspect Auto Hop probably uses some sort of bookmarking insertion based on automated recognition of commercial inserts (called "fingerprinting'"), which if true could certainly be argued to be a manipulation of the content stream by the distributor.'"

I had a ReplayTV years ago that did this, which used to be a competitor for Tivo until they lost the pricing war (didn't take long!). Actually until a few months ago I still used it regularly to tape standard def TV shows, but then my "lifetime" subscription ran out... (let THAT be a lesson to you)

Anyway they had two incredible features on these boxes, from around 2003 until the service shut down. The first was commercial skipping, which worked reasonably well. The second was the ability to share recorded shows. Several communities sprung up around this capability, so you could request a show that you had missed from someone else who had taped it.

Predictably they were sued and that did not help their already troubled business model. But it's not such a new thing for commercial skip to be available in COTS consumer devices. And man I miss it!

Oh. You didn't realise that they reconsidered and continued the service after we all bitched at their plans to discontinue? By the time they did that I'd switched to running against SchedulesDirect provided schedule served up by WiRNS (same data that replaytv serve up), and since that works so well I haven't bothered to switch back. If you've still got your boxes, I suggest reconnecting them.:)

I couldn't live without my 2 replaytvs. I use them to record everything - standard or high def in medium quality

When cable TV was originally created, it was promoted as an advertisement-free alternative to regular TV. The subscription fee was the replacement to advertising revenue. Many people seem to have forgotten that -- today, it's just a foregone conclusion that you have to suffer advertising on everything. But it's a lie; And if there's millions of viewers on DishTV's network, then it doesn't matter how loudly advertisers scream... Dish can just pay the content producers directly and tell them to suck dick. The only one that loses here are advertisers who have to suck dick instead of forcing theirs down their subscriber's throats.:O

The real problem for most people is that advertising never ends, it never seems to be enough. For Americans it might just always have been there, I am old enough and European enough there are alternatives. Germany has a very odd mechanic where they seems to show all the ads on one TV station for about half an hour and that is it. Belgium occasionally has one. The BBC has none and Dutch TV didn't have to use any on Sunday so they had to add cartoons to make programs run a full hour. Battle Star Galactica (The original) followed by Bugs Bunny and then the news.

But if you watch some American TV (and may god have mercy on your soul) you will see ads EVERYWHERE, every five minutes, they have popups during the program, on the first seconds as the program comes back on after a commercial block and in the program itself. The logic seems to be that if 1 ad works, a 100 will work even better.

The reasoning when applied to sex (hey, I can't always use car anologies) would be that since your gf likes a small penis inside, she would REALLY like a big one so why not have her fucked by a whale and make her really happy. And then you wonder why she ain't happy, because you just make your gf explode into a thousand gooey bits from being banged by a volkswagen (oh okay, one car analogy) sized penis! HAPPY?

It as as when your gf asks you to spank her, what she means is that she wants you to make her hiny glow a nice pink color. NOT to beat her until she is a thin red paste on the wall and the cops are hauling you away, yet again (and now you know why on/. we use car analogies, because the other kind are just to revealing of the inner workings of the average analogy using slashdotter). There is a line between advanced sex play and first degree murder and there is a line between advertising that works and advertising that doesn't work because there is just to fucking much of it.

People are lazy, that can lead you to believe you can push them and stop until they start to react. The problem is that while people have a great deal of inertia, once they stop moving, they are unstoppable. Once people have started using time-shifting and ad-blockers, you can't get them to stop again. I started using ad blocking because a series of ads just pissed me off enough to take the effort and now all ads are blocks and screw you if your website dies because of it.

I think the real problem is that TV execs don't eat their own dog shit (calling TV food is just to ridiculous) they don't have to sit through their own ads to watch their own content. They don't get just how fucking annoying it gets and the people that stop watching don't show up on their statistics until suddenly, advertising on TV doesn't have as much effect in generating sales. You can see it in the advertising industry, they know they aren't reaching customers anymore but are at a loss of coming up with a solution. There are still viewers but they are the cattle that lack the income/knowledge to go elsewhere, the high income viewers are gone, unreachable. So... MORE ADS! That will get them back!

I visited the US once, a few years ago, and made the mistake of trying to watch a movie on TV there. It was unwatchable. Every ten minutes or so, a break for five minutes of advertising. Completly ruined the mood.

I was also surprised by the number of pharmacutical adverts I saw. Over here in the UK, direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs is prohibited.

The reasoning when applied to sex (hey, I can't always use car anologies) would be that since your gf likes a small penis inside, she would REALLY like a big one so why not have her fucked by a whale and make her really happy. And then you wonder why she ain't happy, because you just make your gf explode into a thousand gooey bits from being banged by a volkswagen (oh okay, one car analogy) sized penis! HAPPY?

It as as when your gf asks you to spank her, what she means is that she wants you to make her hiny glow a nice pink color. NOT to beat her until she is a thin red paste on the wall and the cops are hauling you away, yet again (and now you know why on/. we use car analogies, because the other kind are just to revealing of the inner workings of the average analogy using slashdotter). There is a line between advanced sex play and first degree murder and there is a line between advertising that works and advertising that doesn't work because there is just to fucking much of it.

There is nothing more "industry unfriendly" than a genuine free market. Despite propaganda, no businessman ever wants to compete in freedom. What you want is to control the customer and the competition, not let them control you.

As a long-time advocate of censorship in mass-distribution media, I have to remind everyone that this is also a form of censorship.

I believe, it would be great if government ensured availability of media in such ad-stripped form, and provided a way to compensate the providers with subscription fees even if those providers refuse to implement such service on their own, or do not like the fees that users are willing to pay.

As a long-time advocate of censorship in mass-distribution media, I have to remind everyone that this is also a form of censorship.

Which part is censorship?

The part where consumers get to opt-in to a service to skip ads, continue watching TV with ads as they have before, or continue to DVR it and make up their own minds then? Or the part where the owner of the content wants to sell advertising inserted with the product and not have a reseller editing the final item without their say-so?

The part that advertisers are prevented from distributing their speech to some potential listeners despite advertisers clearly intending to do so and even paying for it.

The part where consumers get to opt-in to a service to skip ads, continue watching TV with ads as they have before, or continue to DVR it and make up their own minds then? Or the part where the owner of the content wants to sell advertising inserted with the product and not have a reseller editing the final item without their say-so?

Free speech is about the rights of the speaker, not listener. Consumer protection is about the rights of the listener, and thanks to the First Amendment, the former always trumps the latter in US (until "speech" reaches the point of being obscenity, a part of criminal activity, or by itself causes direct harm such as very loud noise, as thos

They can speak alright, but I don't have to listen to them and I choose not to.

You can refuse to watch. No one defend the consumer's right to get a partial message -- content without commercials.

The nature of mass media is that the listener has to go out of his way, and possibly violate copyright (or pseudo-copyright established by "copyright protection" laws) to get access to the version of "speech" that he prefers. Consumer has to rely on someone else censoring what was supposed to be an indivisible stream of content and commercials coming from TV network.

They are not entitled to having their message distributed by Dish Network and they are not entitled to having their message listened to by me.

This is something that really bugs me. When I was a kid, I can remember the exact pattern of commercials. There were exactly 4 commercial breaks with 4 commercials each 30 seconds long. So, you had 22 minutes of content for 8 minutes of advertising. Even the placement was exactly the same in my favorite shows. Two breaks were interspersed during the show with 2 breaks mixed in between show intro-outros. I don't know if the ratio is the same, but the breaks on network TV are definitely way too long and far too much for my patience.

One of which being that I was fucking tired of PAYING to watch advertisements. It's one of the biggest scams of all time. Everywhere I go, I'm inundated with ads. The rare time I go to watch a movie at the theater, now instead of just movie ads, I'm watching ads for soft-drinks, cars, TV shows...
Keep going Entertainment Industry. Keep annoying the shit out of me. See how far it gets you.

Exactly. Why would you *pay* for TV services, and then have adverts shown all the time? American TV is the worst for this, with about five minutes of programme for every ten minutes of obnoxiously loud adverts.

I don't really watch a lot of TV, but loud intrusive adverts put me off watching what little I do watch. BBC iPlayer is just about perfect.

The Advertisers dictate what gets shown and when.The Advertisers can dictate when the Network moves to another program despite the previous one (eg US Foodball) still not being finished.The Advertisers can dictate the rules of sports so that they can have as many commercial breaks as possible. This is why they hate proper Foortball or Rugby.

The British Broadcasting Corporation does not have adverts on domestic television. It's much better. Just pay your TV licence to the government instead of paying your cable subscription to the media organisation, and magically, your TV programs have no ads. Really, try it, you'll like it a lot.

Slashdot is also almost completely supported by advertising. As many users on this site block them, they have moved to more subtle advertising like paid stories on Ask Slashdot, sponsored polls and their jobs site [slashdot.org]. All you are doing is shooting yourself in the leg. Moves like this will only introduce more subtle advertising, using psychological ways like those 0.1s flashes of products in between and product placement. Is that better then? Now you at least know when you are being advertised something. Then you won't, but your mind will, subliminally.

I really don't care. Sometimes some ads are interesting. Sometimes they aren't. I have the option to turn them off, but I choose not to. I like to see what's out there, because sooner or later - if it is relevant - I will need to have an informed opinion about it. Or just dont't, and have a good motive for that. Because in IT, clients don't like to hear "I've never even heard of it" from their consultants.

Ads on the Internet were interesting 10-15 years ago... Small static banners advertising stuff that might even be relevant for a student/nerd like me at that time. Today they lie ("You have won!", "You may be at risk..." etc.), flash, jump, shake, slide over content etc. and that beyond obnoxious. I now block it all and it's their loss. If they behaved I probably wouldn't be so likely to do it. The so-called 'targeted advertising' simply doesn't work - for me at least. Whenever I happen to unblock ads or surf from other machines, the ads are all over the place, usually thinking I'm either a pregnant woman or a handyman, both of which are unbelievably off the mark.

I also block telemarketers and paper ads in my mailbox, using relevant signup services.

Ads on TV are even worse. Once in a full moon someone makes a good or funny television ad, but they rarely stand the test of being repeated 6-10 times each hour...

Ads on the Internet were interesting 10-15 years ago... Small static banners advertising stuff that might even be relevant for a student/nerd like me at that time. Today they lie ("You have won!", "You may be at risk..." etc.), flash, jump, shake, slide over content etc. and that beyond obnoxious.

Sorry, but even back then they were obnoxious. There was like maybe a year of ads that were like you describe, then it quickly degenerated into crap "Punch the monkey!" type ads, animated images, flash animations, pop-ups, pup-unders, and sound. By 1999 it was already a cesspit.

Whenever I happen to unblock ads or surf from other machines, the ads are all over the place

There are plenty of sites that are happy to use boobs to sell you stuff. Part of the reason that I don't turn of the ads at slashdot is that I don't need boobs to be interested in the things that tend to get advertised here.

It also doesn't help that ads tend to use technologies that are an obvious security problem. If I see a page at foo.com loading anything but foo.com I tend to get suspicious quick and am highly likely to block all of that untrusted unverified 3rd party stuff.

Moves like this will only introduce more subtle advertising, using psychological ways like those 0.1s flashes of products in between and product placement. Is that better then? Now you at least know when you are being advertised something. Then you won't, but your mind will, subliminally.

Well, TV shows have started countering the DVR trend of skipping ads by doing more and more product placement. Where there was once a generic computer, there's a Dell or Apple. A cellphone, a Sprint Android or an iPhone. Ge

Cable companies are just distributors, not show producers, yet they're always referring to their pay-TV as a "product". How is that any different than pirates offering the same "product" as television without ads delivered over the Internet for free?

It's still very easy for software or hardware to detect such tricks. Remember what they tried with their analogue content protection system in the day for DVDs?
You can't exactly call that a huge success, and that's considerably more tricky to eliminate than what you're suggesting now.

You mean Macrovision? That's been around since the days of the VCR. It's always been a minor annoyance for home users, but anyone who can solder to veroboard would have no problem making a device to remove the macrovision protection. So it never really deterred pirates at all. The only people it could have worked on were those who rented tapes and made a personal copy for their collection, but weren't concerned enough to go and buy a macrovision remover. Widely available, even though quite illegal post-DMCA

They did, for two good reasons. Or more precisely, they put a 'use macrovision for this bit' flag on DVDs and required (via the CSS licence) that all players macrovision-protect the output if that flag is set.

Firstly, because DVDs came out long before DVD-recorders. At the time, the only way for a home user to record was on VCR. Requiring macrovision meant no renting DVDs and making tapes from them, or copying DVDs to tape to give to friends. Completly useless on expert pirates, but enough to deter the cas

Product placement does not annoy me. Actually, the reverse annoys me - covering the manufacturer logo with a sticker or something like that.

Also, ads do not really annoy me... the first time. After that, I do not want to see that ad ever again and if I do, I get annoyed really quickly, because i hate this kind of repetition. Watching an ad once can be informative - I may find out about a product that I did not know before, but the second time is annoying.

Or we'll have scroller ads that take the bottom 10% of the screen (the TV networks are getting particularly obnoxious about this).

I don't know who decided those were a good idea. I don't really mind commercials, but blocking part of the screen while the show is on is obnoxious. And anytime a show has dialogue in a foreign language, they put the translation at the bottom of the screen - where it's blocked by an ad reminding me about some stupid show or special. I don't know why they think the best way to get me to watch some other show on their network is to ruin the show i'm currently watching on their network. My sympathy for network

Slashdot is also almost completely supported by advertising. As many users on this site block them, they have moved to more subtle advertising like paid stories on Ask Slashdot, sponsored polls and their jobs site [slashdot.org].

A very curious assertion coming from a brand new user... I have to assume you are actually a/. employee.

This also makes me wonder if all the "shills" popping up here aren't actually a creation of the site owners themselves, trying to increase traffic via controversy.

0.1s flashes of products...Now you at least know when you are being advertised something. Then you won't, but your mind will, subliminally.

Someone in the advertising industry should know that that particular type of subliminal advertising has been proven in every experiment to not work. If its too fast for the viewer to notice consciously, he has not noticed it period. So be my guest and waste your client's money.

Moves like this will only introduce more subtle advertising, using...product placement. Is that better then?

YES. A thousand times yes. Product placement can even make a show BETTER. Ever seen a character in a movie order a "soda" at a restaurant? Or walk into a bar and tell the bartender, "give me a beer"? That has always annoyed the crap out of me. If you do that in real life, you'll be asked, "what beer do you want, moron?"

Does it bother me that in Spider-Man, Parker pulled a can of Dr Pepper with his web while practicing? No, I have cans of soda around in my room, I'm not weirded out that Parker drinks that particular soda. I watch tv shows and see that prop departments make cereal boxes and soda cans with fictitious brands that have a similar look to real brands. Why instead of wasting money just not get paid to display the real stuff?

It's like the difference between those annoying flash ads and the google texts ads. The tv ads are like the flash ads. They block the content you want to see, are loud and obnoxious. The product placement is just there in the background, and you get to continue watching your show, like the google text ads are, just to the side in the sidebar. The first type, I will block every time. The second is absolutely fine with me.

Yes, but if I buy a subscription, there are no ads [slashdot.org]. Compare this to TV, where you pay >$100/mo and still get 15 minutes of ads for every hour of show. What bothers me isn't that they have ads, or even that a TV subscription without ads would be more expensive, it's that they refuse to offer an ad-free experience *at all*.

I think it's outrageous that Dish has to *pay* local companies for the right to broadcast what the Over-The-Air companies give away for free.

The local affiliates' demands for payment for acting as essentially a beneficial service was always an unreasonable accommodation. I fully support Dish giving the local channels the giant middle finger by cutting off their revenue stream for those customers.

They can either be happy that Dish is spreading their marketing sponsored content or they can charge Dish for the rights to broadcast it commercial free. I don't see why they get to do both.

aye. If they priced their product assuming they would also sell advertising time/space and then find the customer is blocking the advertising, they can be sure to be annoyed and negotiate differently next time.

But the networks also get paid from the other side, by their advertisers. That is the purpose of a network: They are essentially the managers and middlemen that coordinate between advertisers, distributors and studios. Sometimes with co-ownership of some elements.

The networks won't be able to sell advertising if everyone is able to skip ads.

Maybe people wouldn't want to skip the ads if they thought the were informative, relative to their needs, and not intrusive. Perhaps the TV advertising companies need to rethink things.... perhaps not.

Dish pays millions of dollars a year to the networks for the "right" to carry their programs. If Dish completely cuts out commercials on every channel they carry, the networks still get money.

This would lead to higher costs, of course. Right now channels make money by selling retransmission rights and ad slots. They spend money by producing shows or licensing syndicated programs. If you remove some of the income but none of the expenditures, they'll no doubt raise prices to the cable and satellite firms, who guess what - will raise rates to you!

I've lost a few channels on DirecTV for short periods of time (a couple of weeks) while they fought over retransmission rights. I'm sure that's happene

If dish can skip content then there is no reason why they can't replace content. THey could start inserting their own ads.

Also as far as implementing this goes, there's no need to auto-detect commercials. just pay some mechanical Turk to do it. sounds like an easy job to watch say 8 hours of TV and mark the commercials. It's only 4 or 5 channels so that's like 20 people to pay.

I work in the biz. They (all major content providers) already do this. By replacing ads on the set top box (STB) there are three tiers of advertising: nationwide ads, regional ads and local ads. This allows them to maximize profits without having nationwide advertising for business that may only operate within a locality. Those hard drives in the STBs are being used for a lot more than just storing your DVRed content these days.

Also as far as implementing this goes, there's no need to auto-detect commercials. just pay some mechanical Turk to do it. sounds like an easy job to watch say 8 hours of TV and mark the commercials. It's only 4 or 5 channels so that's like 20 people to pay.

Hell, the commercial breaks on just 4 channels of prime time can be tagged by just one guy if he has a tool that lets him fast-forward and rewind.

So, what you're saying is that 30-minute long publicity WILL NOT pay for content they air (but they will still be able to afford the shows), but instead will focus on other revenue models? I can see why you are upset. Welcome to the 21st century.

I work in the advertising industry and it is outrageous how far people can go to abuse others. It isn't free to make all those good tv shows and in my opinion authors should get paid for them. Mostly this is based on advertising on TV. If you don't want advertising, go buy the DVD boxes which don't have them. But have some decency and let people get paid for their hard work. Dish Network is bunch of assholes.

Fine but don't then fill the DVD's with crap about piracy and advertising other shows, I just bought them to avoid getting the actual show I want to see in an uninterrupted format, let me have it!

Look.. if you give me free content, pay for it with advertising. If I pay you for content..or like Dish does, then cram your advertising..k?

I am old enough to remember when cable was new and shiny. At first I was..wow! Great! I pay you and I get to see shows without commercials right? Bzzzt.. no.. I get to pay you AND see commercials..how silly of me.

Personally, I would rather pay and watch 98% pure crap than "prime" content with 3-4-5 minutes of ads blaring every 10 minutes. For me..yes..I would pay for you to just go away.

I am old enough to remember when cable was new and shiny. At first I was..wow! Great! I pay you and I get to see shows without commercials right? Bzzzt.. no.. I get to pay you AND see commercials..how silly of me.

This exact issue pisses me off immensely. When "pay" TV first came to Australia one of the big selling points was you pay for the service and get sport and show without ads.

Then they realised that TV shows without ads only went for about 22 minutes so didn't fit together too well. So ads for other pay tv programs started to get wedged in. Then ads for other pay tv channels. Now its a free for all with more ads than show.

Now generations growing up with advertising filled pay TV from the start of their TV watching days think this is fine and the norm. When all I see is a massive double-pay.

This is happening only when you watch shows the day after they air. A consumer can do the same thing right now with a DVR. Simply record all the shows and watch them the next night, fast forwarding through all the commercials. Dish is simply automating the process.

You can do it the same day, even with a DVR. You don't have to wait that long. A 30 minute TV show is ~21 minutes long once you cut out the commercials. Wait 8 minutes after the show normally starts, and you can watch your show commercial free, with a minute of fast forwarding.

This is happening only when you watch shows the day after they air. A consumer can do the same thing right now with a DVR. Simply record all the shows and watch them the next night, fast forwarding through all the commercials. Dish is simply automating the process.

Be careful, if they knew that, there will be a push to make such features on devices illegal, or every time you press fast forward it inserts a 30 second advertisement!

F*ck that noise. This isn't about being paid for hard work, this is negotiations over just how badly they can sell the customer.

If a TV network has the option of providing a show, and making $40 million off of it (ad free), or $60 million off of it (with ads), they will always choose the latter. As both the customers, as well as the eyeballs being sold (thanks guys), we have the right to tell them that it's enough. Enough of these ads, enough of the chronically shortened programming, enough of the bullsh*t where you trot out an actor earning $500,000 / episode, and tell the rest of us that the network will go bankrupt if they listened to the viewers for once in their goddamn lives.

But I might choose to only watch NBC via the Dish network if Dish provides it without commercials.

BTW, I already have car insurance via a mutual insurer that doesn't advertise; they simply have the best rates; everyone in my state knows it. So, it seems I don't need most of what the advertising industry is selling.

Exactly, how is it abuse to skip commercials on recorded content?
I do understand that that the producers need money, but you can not force viewers to watch content they do not want to see. Do you want to make it illegal to go to the loo during the commercial break as well?
Perhaps the producers could try a humble attitude and a "Donate" button instead of advertising companies?

The problem isn't just the commercials, it's all the annoying ads in the lower corners of my screen, advertising all the other shows they produce. It distracts from the show I'm watching, and sometimes it blocks something I needed to see that was relevant to the show I was supposed to be focusing on. The networks are shoving more and more advertising down our throats and people are tired of it. Personally I would rather product placement, as long as it isn't the 1950's cheesy way, I'd rather see a Budweiser than a can that says "beer".
The 'stars' and the executives are all paid too much and the majority of shows suck. Let's not even talk about reality shows, I really doubt those cost a fortune to make.
So I will restate the earlier post "cry me a river"

...watching the ads that you guys put together nowadays that are funny and entertaining, but forgetting what the ad is actually for because modern advertisers seem to forget to mention the product until the last half second of the ad, or...

You make money out of making everyone else's life worse, but only just enough that they still put up with it to watch their shows.

People are learning how to cut you out of their lives. I hope your whole industry shrivels and dies as a result of people realising that you and people like you just make everything worse, insinuating yourselves into every aspect of human life and communications like a plague, a plague of serial liars.

No, it is not free to make TV shows but the end broadcasters pay the producers to make them in order to fill broadcast hours and provide a vehicle for their revenue earner: advertising. The broadcasters are in turn paid for the insertion of advertising material into their transmission, and by re-broadcasters. This advertising is sold on the basis of the number of eyeballs that could potentially see it since there is no accurate measure of the number of people that actually see it (live or delayed), and even less of a measure of those that actually absorb it. That potential number of people is completely unchanged by this action which is, ultimately, no different to people using DVR skip, making a coffee, surfing the 'net, or having a pee during the advertising breaks. Everybody in that chain is fully paid by the time of broadcast except the end viewer who, understandably, does not feel in the slightest guilty for not watching the advertising material. This is also the end viewer who, having paid for a DVD box set, would still be bombarded by unskippable warnings containing half-truths that effectively call them a 'thief' and, in many cases, advertising. The industry is, as usual, trying to have its cake, eat its cake, and have a piece of everyone else's cake too.

If a legal challenge is mounted on the basis that creating external metadata, such as an index of positions in the stream, is a breach of copyright in the stream then it will be one of the more memorable attempts to overreach copyright law. If such a thing were allowed to stand then the act of creating an index card for a DVD library listing the length of the feature and extras would be a copyright violation, bookmarking a position in a movie your are watching would be a violation: clearly an idiotic proposition and counter to the public interest. I suspect, as usual, copyright holders will attempt to circumvent the actual copyright law by using contracts to do an end-run.

Consider that Hulu gives people access to shows when they want to watch them just like a DVR, except you can't skip the ads.. Yet we keep hearing about the television networks, the very people who own Hulu, and the very people who want to make money from advertising inserted into their content, doing things [slashdot.org] with the company that will drive people away and kill it.

Don't know if you work in the television advertising industry, but if so have you ever thought of asking your clients "Do you guys really have a c

No, I'm not going to go look it up and yes, I'm sure it's been asked before. What, exactly, am I paying a monthly subscription for?*

*Actually, I'm not. I just moved and I elected to not transfer my service. There are better things to do with my time than watch TV. That includes reading Slashdot. Let that sink in. Posting on message board is a more worthwhile endeavor than watching the tripe spewing from Hollywood. You, personally, have made it such a miserable experience that I'm simply no longer willing to put up with your garbage. So, on a personal note, thank you.

Nobody is going to have any sympathy for you because you need to realize one simple immutable fact:

nobody wants the shit you are responsible for making. nobody. everybody hates you with the burning passion of a thousand suns. the only way for you to get advertisements in front of people is by the lack of choice.

Therefore, you are already deeply unethical in any attempt to sue somebody out of existence like Dish Network that is providing what the customer wants (Sonicblue), and deeply disturbed and sociopathic with your successful attempt to ruin television with disruptive overlays during programming.

The only way you can survive is by continuing to make sure the consumer has the lack of choice, and then you sit there with the unmitigated gall to complain when choice is provided.

Get a clue. Get a different career. I suggest Ambulance Chasing Lawyer or the guys who provide fresh meat for Hostel-like entertainment packages in Eastern European countries. You know.... something with a little more heart.

I agree that people should get paid for all the hard work they put in creating adverts, but you must realise that your industry is paid for by the advertisers and those advertisers make money by selling products.

Scenario one: I watch TV and (by various means) skip the ads, then go shopping and may buy products whose companies have paid the advertising industry $millions.

Scenario two: I watch TV and have to see ads, then go shopping and avoid products whose ads I have seen because I associate them with push

Maybe someone should set up some kind of advertisement rating and karma collecting website. The people could adjust (even temporary) their shopping habits accordingly. There should be a price to pay for obnoxious crap. The site wouldn't even need to have an impact on sales if it simply went popular enough, no one would want to be on the wall of shame. The problem would of course be, that I wouldn't want to buy most of the stuff in the first place. But there is a solution to this: guilt by association. I'm n

I work in the advertising industry and it is outrageous how far people can go to abuse others. It isn't free to make all those good tv shows and in my opinion authors should get paid for them. Mostly this is based on advertising on TV. If you don't want advertising, go buy the DVD boxes which don't have them. But have some decency and let people get paid for their hard work. Dish Network is bunch of assholes.

DVDs aren't available for months, perhaps years, after the broadcast. When you do get them, you're forced to sit through trailers and copyright warnings.

In the UK, Sky have realised that people don't want to be spoiled about this weeks episode online, so now broadcast prime time shows within 72 hours of U.S. airings, and cinemas usually release at the same time.

In the 90s I used to buy DS9 epsiodes on tape, for $10/episode. Provide the opportunity and people will buy your product.

Personally I object to paying a subscription just so Rupert Murdoch can force adverts down my throat. If the channel is free I have no problems with the verts but when I'm paying for it you can **** right off!

I work in the advertising industry and it is outrageous how far people can go to abuse others. It isn't free to make all those good tv shows and in my opinion authors should get paid for them. Mostly this is based on advertising on TV. If you don't want advertising, go buy the DVD boxes which don't have them. But have some decency and let people get paid for their hard work. Dish Network is bunch of assholes.

The ad and TV industry only has itself to blame. The amount of advertising minutes in typical hour show keeps increasing. Flip around channels at random and you have a much higher chance of landing on an ad than program content. I pay Netflix and Amazon to watch shows rather than put up with constant interruption at key dramatic moments by loud and annoying ads. Dish seems to want to give their customers what the customers want. Maybe the ad and TV industries should try and treat viewers with a bit more r

Slight modification to improve the plan: Don't just add it to general taxes. Instead, make it a tax that applies only to those households which own a television. That's how us brits fund the BBC, and it works very well here. Lots of money is raised, but at the same time people who don't watch TV don't feel offended that they are being forced to pay for someone else's entertainment.

The system does face one recent threat though: With a lot more people watching programs on iPlayer and the internet replacing T

then taxes would go up quite a bit for everyone, even people who don't watch much TV.

I agree.

I don't even have a TV. I'd be pretty pissed having to pay a tax so we don't have advertising. Even if that were the case, they'd just put advertising directly in the show (more than they already do). It would feel worse than watching an infomercial.

I'm also surprised that Canadians don't complain about having to pay a CRIA tax on recordable CD/DVD media. Over my childhood I bought so many spindles of CDs and DVDs for backups or moving data (high bandwidth, high latency). I'd be pissed if that was m

Even if that were the case, they'd just put advertising directly in the show (more than they already do). It would feel worse than watching an infomercial.

The system in the UK also includes a ban on Product placement and other advertising in-show. I think they've eased up a bit now, but when I was a kid the cartoon "Top Cat" was retitled to "Boss Cat" because there was a local brand of cat food called "Top Cat". (Yes, they actually edited the title sequence, badly). The gang still called him TC though, which would have been confusing if I had actually thought about it.

Further, highways are important national infrastructure, beyond YOUR personal use, bu alsot necessary for the functioning of the nation. So yes its fair for someone who walks everyone to pay the same amount of income tax on highway funding as the person who owns 3 cars ( who can only drive one at a time mind you)

If they charged tax for everyone to pay for TV shows, then taxes would go up quite a bit for everyone, even people who don't watch much TV.

You're already paying that tax. When you buy a Coke or a Ford or a Dell, part of the price you pay goes to buy advertising to convince you to by more Coke or Fords or Dells. Even those who don't watch TV, but by Cokes or Fords or Dells, pay this tax. It would be more efficient, and subject us all to far less attempts at mind control, to fund TV with an honest tax than th

What if they just moved the ads to the end of the show? That would suck less than having it constantly interrupted and the advertisers still get eyeballs on their content (in theory).

It's gotten to the point in Australia where the commercial channels clip the content before the ad break so for stuff like the simpsons you often don't get to hear the punchline. No wonder people download the stuff.